[arijitkanrar]

Not an expert, but will attempt.

Originally Posted by SS80

A few questions that someone from airlines/ prior experience can answer.
1. Why did the landing gear collapse/breakaway? Could it be the first point of contact with the smaller aircraft?

I think the landing gear is designed this way. The gear is mainly designed to handle vertical loads. A collision like this will create very high horizontal loads. To prevent these loads from damaging the fuselage of the aircraft, its designed to breakaway. Clearly it worked as the fuselage remained intact as it slid down the runway. It burnt down later. If the gear wasn't designed to break off, the impact forces would have broken the fuselage which would lead to a much more catastrophic scenario.

Originally Posted by SS80

2. Those escape shoots in the front have a lower gradient to slide since the landing gear has collapsed. Surprised to see 100% evacuation despite this issue.

Not really an issue. While sliding down is faster, but passengers can even half slide, half crawl/scamper down.

Originally Posted by SS80

3. In the videos there is some white liquid dropping off the fuselage and onto the floor and the engine for some reason seems to be spinning.

Aircrafts carry various sorts of fluids (fuel/hydraulic fluid/water etc). It could be any one of them.
The engine could not be shut down. Most likely due to damage of related components.

Originally Posted by SS80

4. Since the A350 will be in a Nose high and tail-down position(not sure of the exact technical name) at the time of landing, they won't be able to see directly what's beneath their nose, won't a proper camera with night vision help pilots in this case?

Thats the flare maneuver. Its not that high nose up enough to block the view.
A camera system would add further complexity (and associated installation and maintenance cost) to a already complex phase of flight. And it would probably be of limited use. Aircrafts already have enough navigation lights as it is to be seen.
The only commercial aircraft in history which had problems with visibility during the landing flare was the Concorde. And it was equipped with a mechanism to tilt the nose cone down while landing to improve the visibility.

Originally Posted by govindremesh

Quoting from this link, it seems that the Dash-8 was on the runway for 50 seconds before impact. This is what I assumed, as pilots usually check the runway for arriving aircrafts before they enter to line up and wait. Additionally , the surviving captain of Dash-8 mentions that they had takeoff clearance.

It's strange that the A350 pilots did not see the aircraft on the runway. Might be due to visibility problems. Even stranger that the runway incursion alert system did not trigger despite Haneda having a surface movement radar

Thanks for the link. Yes 50sec is a very long time. There are various systems in place to alert other pilots/ATC such as the Surface Movement Radar and the navigation lights on the aircraft itself. ATC should've been able to notice the Coast Guard aircraft moving on to the runway. The landing pilots should've been able to see the navigation lights of the Coast Guard aircraft.
The ATC transcripts released indicate that the CG aircraft was not given takeoff clearance and was only instructed to hold short.
We have to wait for the investigation report to understand. As with most aviation accidents, it looks like a combination of several factors.

Originally Posted by bsdbsd

In the days where general public can track where all the flights are, this one seems like an rather odd omission in terms of visibility. Another contributing factor could be the ADS-B of Dash8 was INOP. Its high time a FR24 like screen are introduced in the cockpit to suplement the vision of pilots, and ensure all vehicles that move are equipped with ADS-B transponders.

Agree that runway incursions have become some of the most common incidents in recent times
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/airp...ry?id=97358077

But not sure what problem would having an additional display with all aircraft positions solve. This will only add clutter. The pilot of a landing aircraft only needs to know if the active runway is clear. The ATC of most large international airports (including Tokyo Haneda) have a Surface movement radar displays and can see exactly where all the aircrafts/ground vehicles are on the airport.
This is irrespective of whether they have ADSB-B transponders.
So there are already systems in place. We have to wait for the investigation to understand what actually went wrong.

[SansGT]

Originally Posted by fhdowntheline

1) The obvious question- how did the A350 and the Coast guard Bombardier end up on the same runway. That has to be a major communication/ ground ops error.

This is mainly caused by communication gap between ATC and Pilots. Sadly, these incidents have been very prevalent in the recent times, especially in the USA. Just search for near misses at airports in recent times and you will find numerous examples of close shaves.

[skanchan95]

Apparently this how the two collided


Wreck of the Q300

[fhdowntheline]

The point about the A350 pilots not being able to spot the Dash 8 turning onto the runway has important lessons especially in the dark/bad weather. Does that mean that it is only providential that such possible incidents have not happened in the past?
Would it be a prudent step to avoid having planes hold short of the active runway in low visibility or night conditions in future? A 3 minute delay in runway ops vs hundreds of lives. Not everyone will be as lucky in future.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by SansGT

This is mainly caused by communication gap between ATC and Pilots. Sadly, these incidents have been very prevalent in the recent times, especially in the USA. Just search for near misses at airports in recent times and you will find numerous examples of close shaves.

We will have to wait for the accident report obviously, but why do you think there was a communication gap? I have looked at the radio transcript. Nothing wrong there. All exactly what you expect. The ATC instruction and the respective read back were all correct.

For some reason the Dash 8, did move onto the runway, even though it had read back correctly to hold.

Originally Posted by fhdowntheline

The point about the A350 pilots not being able to spot the Dash 8 turning onto the runway has important lessons especially in the dark/bad weather.

From what we know now, it looks like the Dash 8 moved onto the runway as the A350 had just touched down. There is no way they could have avoided it.

It is completely normal to see other planes waiting next to the active runway, waiting to be cleared to move onto the runway. So seeing a plane racing and moving toward the so called hold position would have been of no concern to the A350 pilots. They see it happen every flying day and do it themselves too. What they were not counting on, was the Dash 8 taxing away from the hold position onto the runway. Judging by how the Dash 8 hit the A350 I doubt they ever saw it move.

So the main question is going to be, why did the Dash 8 did not hold as it was instructed to do and also as it confirmed it was going to do. Did it stop initially and move on afterwards, or move straight onto the runway.

Remember the worst aviation crash ever. A KLM 747 crashed into a Panam 747 at Tenerife. There were as always several reasons. But one of the main reasons was the KLM captain believed he had take off clearance. In those days, there was really no standard phraseology. The Tenerife accident gave a huge boost to standardize radio communication in aviation world wide. Every pilot knows the terms you need to hear for take of take off clearance, and you need to read them back to ATC. No such clearance was given by the Tower, or read back by the Dash 8 crew.

Jeroen

[SansGT]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

We will have to wait for the accident report obviously, but why do you think there was a communication gap? I have looked at the radio transcript. Nothing wrong there. All exactly what you expect. The ATC instruction and the respective read back were all correct.

For some reason the Dash 8, did move onto the runway, even though it had read back correctly to hold.

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact reason until there is a thorough investigation. There may be multiple scenarios - pilot fatigue, language barriers, pressure to be within the allowed legal working hours for pilots, acting in a way in spite of getting clearance to do something else. If you revisit the Tenerife disaster, which is often termed as the worst aviation disaster in history, the KLM captain (being super experienced) did start the takeoff role even when they were not explicitly cleared for takeoff. He was under the pressure to be within the allowable flying limits before rest period.

At the end, pilots are highly trained, but they are human, and humans do commit mistakes.

[BoneCollector]

As per VAS aviation video on YouTube, the Dash 8 stayed on the active runway for about 45 seconds before it was hit by the A350.

https://youtu.be/UmkAEkss5cs?si=lZVyOlTmjqlYBfEo